Kiss in the Dark
by Zatcher
Summary: VALENTINES SEASON RE-RELEASE Aang sighed in relief. I meanokay. And she turned to walk away. He was in the clear! She'd never have to know what happenedOh, and uh, she said as she turned around. You forgot this. Very cute and funny Taang story!


A/N: So I was just sitting in front of my computer, mentally scowling at the shortage of Taang stories, when I decided to write about Aang cooking. But of course, I simply could not write it up and not have some Taang in it. So this is what I ended up with! I hope you like the ending, the idea of that didn't come to me until I was almost finished and I had to go back and add some things. Hope you know what that thing is by the end! Anyway, enjoy!

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"Hey Aang, Sokka and I are gonna go look for some water, would you mind starting up dinner?"

"Huh? Oh, okay," replied Aang cheerily, playing with the gum in his mouth, first stretching it out as far from his mouth as he could, then chewing it back in. He had never had gum before and he found it a very entertaining thing.

"Tell Toph to give you a hand if she ever gets back."

"Okay, I will," and he waved goodbye. He stopped playing with the gum and started thinking about dinner. "Dinner, dinner . . ." he said to himself. He jumped to Appa's saddle and took down everything he thought he'd need. First he'd have to make a fire. Easy. He airbended some wood to him from around the place, at the same time clearing a spot for the fire with earthbending. But then he stopped and started wondering how to make the actual fire. He really didn't want to try firebending, he wasn't very fond of it. He clicked his fingers and started looking around for some matches, but didn't find any. Now he came to think of it, he'd never seen Sokka or Katara ever use matches to light a fire . . . he'd never seen either of them actually light the fire at all actually . . . it kind of seemed to always already be there . . . "Hmm . . ." He thought about this for a couple of minutes before grabbing Sokka's boomerang and hitting it with a rock to get sparks. He'd have to keep this to himself . . .

So a few more minutes later he was proudly standing in front of a decent-sized fire and placed three long sticks in the form of a tent over it. He tied the sticks together at the top and hung a pot from them, filled with the remaining water. He held his chin in one hand and started thinking about what to cook. Did he know how to cook? Sure he knew how to cook. He looked around and saw that there was still some fruit left over from lunch. But he thought he should make something everybody would enjoy and Toph had already publicly displayed that she was sick of eating fruit by walking over to Aang during breakfast and stealing his bag of nuts. Now he thought about it too, that was probably the hundreth time Toph had stolen them, yet he couldn't remember ever stopping to buy or pick some. "Hmm . . ." He jumped back on Appa and looked around until he found the bag. It was still decently full, and shrugging off the strangeness of this (as he remembered Toph cleaning out the whole bag), threw the contents into the pot over the fire.

He played with his gum a bit more, not sure of what to add next, so he thought about what Katara might like. Probably fruit, he thought to himself, and snickered at the contrast between the two girls in the team. So he grabbed some mushrooms he was almost positive were safe to eat and threw them in the pot too.

So now he thought about Sokka but dismissed him altogether when he got to the point where he'd have to kill an innocent animal for meat. So instead he pulled out the Tofu Katara had bought in secret at the last town they'd been in and was at the point of throwing that in when he remembered Toph scowling and warning them that they had to sleep sometime if they ever tried to feed that to her (because unfortunately, she could see every nook and crany of the store no matter where they made their secret shopping.) So he looked out of the corners of his eyes and buried the stuff.

Nuts and some mushrooms that were starting to smell funny didn't seem like a very good meal, so he looked around again for anything else he might be able to throw in. After scouring the area, his eyes landed on Toph's tent. Well she must have _something_ in there, he thought to himself. She couldn't possibly live off the food she stole from him after all.

But then he started wondering about what sort of things Toph might keep in there. He had never seen the inside of her tent when it was up, and she kept her things well wrapped up in her bag every other time. He didn't think it was good behavior to go snooping around other people's stuff, it wasn't gentlemanly, it was a complete invasion of privacy, he would probably get in trouble--

"I'm just looking for food!" he argued to his disapproving conscience. He thought about it, all the while rolling his gum around his finger pensively. So after making sure there was no one around (his eyes darting back and forth the entire time), he inconspicuously made his way over to Toph's tent. He was lucky that it was dark and there was no one around, because he was being anything but inconspicuous. He stood around whistling for a few seconds before he jumped behind a bush, quickly checked that there was still no one around, then rolled out into the open again, and crawled the rest of the way. He sat with his back to the tent for a little bit, his eyes moving wildly from left to right, then, smiling proudly at his own ingenuity, earthbended himself inside as if he were simply backing against a wall of mud.

He had turned around as he'd gone in, and he'd landed on something warm with his mouth on something that tasted quite good. For a moment he stayed there, trying to figure out what he was on and where that feeling in his stomach was coming from. He felt around with his hands and thought he must have landed on a pile of clothes. Then as he moved his hands up, his fingers slid into something silky-feeling. Something that felt very much like it might belong in a high quality thread shop. He slid his fingers around this for a moment and realized it was all attached around something hard and round.

_"Oh no . . ."_ his thought echoed throughout his head, each time fainter and fainter. His heart, in contrast, was beating faster and faster. Suddenly he felt as if he'd just poked a sleeping dragon in the eye . . . Panic wiped his mind clean and he had just one thought: _"Get out."_

He slowly lifted himself up and began to crawl away the way he came. His heart was hammering furiously against his chest and his whole body was shaking with terror.

Once outside, his face blank of emotion, he made his way toward Appa. His steps were straight, his breathing was regular, and his heartbeat was killing him. Finally he reached Appa. He stood there for who knows how long until finally his legs buckled and he collapsed right there and then.

_"I kissed Toph! I can't believe I kissed Toph!"_ Oh, he was in trouble now. He'd have to pack, he'd have to run away, he'd have to start a whole new life under a new name--

"Hey Aang, we're back!" called Katara. Sokka was behind her, carrying a couple of buckets of water. "Aang?" she called again to the unresponsive airbender.

"EWW! What is this stuff?!" yelled Sokka, pinching his nose shut, next to the pot of boiling nuts and mushrooms, which was beginning to spew some very suspicious fumes.

"Stop it Sokka," said Katara, and the two of them started arguing Aang's cooking.

Suddenly, Toph's tent opened and she came out, stretching as she walked. Maybe she hadn't noticed, Aang tried to convince himself. Maybe she had been asleep the whole time. . . .

"Are you two arguing again?" she said lazily to Katara and Sokka.

"NO!" they yelled and kept screaming at each other.

Toph raised an eyebrow and walked away from them.

_"Oh no!"_ thought Aang in renewed panic. _"She's coming this way! Quick! Say something!"_

"Hey Twinkletoes--"

"Glhbrzt . . ." was what came out of his mouth, a kind of choking, gurgling noise.

"Uh . . . Okay . . ." said Toph after a short silence. "I just wanted to tell you that we're gonna get up extra early tomorrow to practice earthbending."

Aang sighed in relief. "I mean--okay." And she turned to walk away. He was in the clear! She'd never have to know what happened--

"Oh, and uh," she said as she turned around. "You forgot this." She kneeled down and pressed her lips against his. He never knew how long that kiss lasted. It may have been a single second, or perhaps several hours, but when she pulled away, Aang realized his gum was back in his mouth. "And I'll be taking this," she added, snatching away Aang's bag, which was full again.

He watched her walk away back to her tent. "Call me when those two have got dinner ready," she said, and slipped inside.

Aang could have sworn he saw a smirk on her face.


End file.
